Exiled Abdelrazik nervous about return to Canada

OTTAWA -- Abousfian Abdelrazik’s African exile may finally come to an end Saturday with his scheduled return to Canada, but that is far from the end of his saga.

Mr. Abdelrazik’s supporters are concerned that he might not actually make it to Pearson International Airport in Toronto, where he is due to arrive at 4:45 p.m. Saturday.

If he does, they eventually want a full public inquiry into his ordeal, saying his case is just the latest in a disturbing series of rights violations that includes Maher Arar and several others, and calls into question the conduct of Canadian officials and their U.S. counterparts.

“We’re not looking at a few unfortunate exceptions. What has emerged is a pattern of human rights violations,” said Amnesty International Canada’s Hilary Homes. “One cannot help but wonder at this point not if there will be another case but how many other cases are out there we simply haven’t heard of.”

Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer said he’s concerned U.S. authorities might intercept his client after he leaves the sanctuary of the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum and transits back to Canada.

An American official paid an unexplained, and unprecedented visit Wednesday to him at the Canadian Embassy in Sudan, said Mr. Abdelrazik’s Ottawa lawyer, Yavar Hameed.

“In discussions with the government they would not definitively tell us what safeguards, what precautions they put in place. If they just transparently told us that we’ve spoken to the Americans . . . and they agree that there will be no detention, nothing untoward then there may not have even been the necessity for me to go to Sudan,” Mr. Hameed said before boarding a flight from Ottawa on the first leg of his journey to Khartoum to accompany his client back to Canada.

Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Emma Welford said no actual meeting between the U.S. official and Mr. Abdelrazik actually took place. She said the two had a “brief exchange” when the U.S. official was visiting the Canadian Embassy on an unrelated matter, and that he “just happened to be there.”

In addition to Hameed, a Foreign Affairs official is to accompany Abdelrazik on his journey.

“The closer he is to coming home the closer he is to being let down, that the rug may be pulled out from beneath his feet,” said Mr. Hameed.

Mr. Abdelrazik also remains on the UN no-fly list, which makes it a crime to give him money. Mr. Hameed said that means his client can’t work, get social services, plus he now owes Foreign Affairs about $7,000 for his 13 month stay with them.

Asked whether the government planned to cut him any financial slack, Mr. Welford referred Canwest News Service to a section of its website that advises travellers they will have to pay back -- with three-per cent interest -- all costs they incur in being repatriated when they get in trouble abroad.

The supporters who once helped pay for his plane ticket, are now technically alleged criminals because it is forbidden to aid someone on the watch list. Those supporters include Stephen Lewis and David Suzuki, as well as former Liberal cabinet minister Warren Allmand, said Samantha McGavin, one of the contributors.

She said those high-profile people were among the 250 who contributed to the fund to buy his plane ticket home “despite the personal risk they incurred since the Canadian government informed them that it was illegal to take this action.”

The Sudanese-born Canadian citizen from Montreal, a father of three, returned to Sudan six years ago to visit his ailing mother. He had lived in Montreal for more than a decade.

After returning to his homeland, Sudanese authorities jailed him and his Canadian passport expired. He says he was tortured.

For the last 13 months, he has been living in what has essentially been limbo at the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon blocked Mr. Abdelrazik’s scheduled return on April 3, saying he had information that he was a security threat, but a scathing Federal Court ruling earlier this month ordered the federal government bring him back to Canada by the end of next week.

Ottawa NDP MP Paul Dewar called for a full public inquiry into Canada’s role in Mr. Abdelrazik’s eventual inclusion on the UN no-fly list.

CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, and the RCMP have no evidence linking him to criminal activity.

Mr. Abdelrazik was placed on the no-fly list after unspecified allegations that he was linked to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Canadian government documents recently revealed that this was done at the request of the United States.

The Federal Court blasted the UN no-fly list in its ruling as fundamentally unfair.

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